Paige Reynolds

Stephen J. Prior Professor of Humanities

English
Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

Contact

preynold@holycross.edu

Areas of Expertise

Modern and Contemporary Irish Literature and Culture Modernism Modern Drama and Performance 20th Century British Literature and Culture

Education

Ph.D., University of Chicago
Paige Reynolds

Biography

I primarily teach courses in modern and contemporary Irish literature, modernism, drama and performance, and academic writing. In these classes, we develop the skills to read and analyze challenging texts such as Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) or Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond (2015). I ask students to say something new and interesting about our readings, and to use “the words on the page” to prove their claims in discussion and in papers. In our lively and provocative class discussions, you’ll learn to take intellectual risks and to embrace the fun of thinking critically about literature and the arts.

We also work together to produce clear and persuasive writing that conveys original insights about literature and performance. To help in this endeavor, I demonstrate for students the pleasures and challenges of being a “teacher-scholar,” a professor who integrates her classroom practice and scholarly research. In my “Modernist Afterlives” seminar, for example, we examine how and why the innovative tactics of high modernism, an early twentieth-century cultural movement, continue to appear in contemporary drama, poetry, and fiction – a concern that inspired my recent monograph, Modernism in Irish Women's Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode, as well as my edited collection, Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture. My research and teaching have informed opinion pieces I’ve published in venues including the Irish Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and ARINS (Royal Irish Academy), in podcasts for New Books Network and Novel Dialogue and in the curation of  "Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Romance Fiction."

Thanks to the Edward Callahan Support Fund for Irish Studies, students have the opportunity to meet and talk with Irish writers whom we read in class, such as Kevin Barry, Anne Enright, Eimear McBride, Mary Morrissy, Paul Muldoon, and Colm Tóibín, and to discuss Irish literature and culture with visiting scholars in Irish Studies. We also collaborate with the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin, where we are building rich partnerships with Irish cultural institutions and contemporary writers to enable exciting cross-cultural opportunities for the Holy Cross community. My classes have travelled to Boston, Providence, New Haven, and New York to see productions of plays, and you might just find us at a local pub discussing poetry or at my house screening a film relevant to our class.

Sample Courses

Introductory Courses

  • Introduction to Literary Studies (multi-genre)
  • Introduction to Academic Writing

Touchstones and Seminars

  • Touchstones II: British Romanticism to the Present
  • Seminar: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Things (with Sarah Stanbury)
  • Seminar: Modernist Afterlives
  • Seminar: A History of Romance Fiction

Irish Studies Courses

  • Modernism and the Irish Literary Revival
  • Contemporary Irish Literature
  • The Irish Short Story 
  • Irish Drama
  • Irish Literary Activism
  • Irish Sex
  • Alcohol in Irish Literature and Culture
  • James Joyce
  • Seminar: Joyce's Ulysses and Critical Theory
  • Seminar: Irish Women's Writing
  • Seminar: Catholicism in Irish Literature and Culture
  • College Honors: Irish Experience (with Suzanne Kirschner)

Selected publications

Books

Modernism in Irish Women's Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Paperback, 2010.

Edited Volumes

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Brogue.” Special Issue: Irish Keywords. Eds. Claire Connolly and James Chandler. New Literary History 56:2 (Spring 2025): 265-274.
  • “Talking about Sex in Twenty-First Century Irish Prose and Performance.” The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Irish Writing. Eds. Anne Fogarty and Eugene O’Brien. London: Routledge, 2025. 287-299. 
  • “Performance and the Irish Essay.” The Cambridge History of the British Essay. Eds. Denise Gigante and Jason Childs.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 635-649.
  • “An Ordinary Revival: Yeats and Irish Women’s Fiction.”  The Irish Revival: A Complex Vision.  Eds. Joseph Valente and Marjorie Howes. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2023. 126-148.
  • "Bird Girls: Modernism and Sexual Ethics in Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” Modernism and Close Reading.  Ed. David James.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 173-190.
  • “Theatrical Ireland: New Routes from the Abbey Theatre to the Gate Theatre.” Irish Literature in Transition, vol. 4 (1880-1940). Ed. Marjorie Howes.  Series eds. Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 55-72.
  • “The Irish Times and Tramp Press.” Irish Literature in Transition, vol. 6 (1980-2020). Eds. Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds. Series eds. Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 392-400.
  • “Sean O’Casey’s Late Modernism: Gender, Race, and Disabled Bodies on the Irish Expressionist Stage.” Cambridge History of Irish Modernism.  Eds. Patrick Bixby and Gregory Castle.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.  227-242.
  • “Prose, Drama, and Poetry, 1891-1920,” A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature.  Eds. Heather Ingman and Clíona Ó Gallchoir.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 131-148.
  • “Spectacular Nostalgia: Modernism and Dramatic Form in Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer,” Irish University Review 48:1 (Summer 2018). 54-67.
  • “’Publish Little, and Publish Well’: An Interview with the Founders of Tramp Press.” Éire-Ireland 52:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2017). 372-390.
  • “The Avant-Garde Doyenne: Mary Manning, the Poets’ Theatre, and the Staging of Finnegans Wake” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 39:2 (Winter 2017). 109-133.
  • “Direction and Design to 1960.” Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre. Eds. Nicholas Grene and Christopher Morash.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 201-216.
  • “Modernist Periodicals.” A History of Modernist Poetry.  Eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 118-138.
  • “'A Theatre of the Head’: Material Culture, Severed Heads, and the Late Drama of W. B. Yeats.” Modern Drama 58:4 (Winter 2015). 437-460.